Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Friday August 28, 2009 @02:42PM
from the nanny-state-to-the-rescue dept.

It seems that Swedish regulators have decided to extend the requirement of not calling yourself a bank to the registration of domain names. Now anyone that tries to register a .SE domain name with the word "bank" in it will need to prove they are a legitimate bank. Hopefully there are no blood banks or anyone with the last name of "Banks" that might want a .SE domain. Here is a Google translation of the demand issued by the authorities to the .SE registry.

Yeah, but that hyphen site ruined all the free advertising by making the website as painful as possible to use. Drive everyone there with a funny name, and then drive them all away with a terrible website. Thank god for Stackoverflow.

So that explains why I couldn't reach www.BjörnsSpankBank.se and I'll have you know that I expect a full refund for the *cough* services that "Björn" failed to render. Thankfully www.BjörnsPörn.se is still up or I'd have to switch to Swiss or *shudder* German sites.

Espcially since a lot of other meanings for bank [reference.com] came first. The original use of bank, in terms of elevation, came into use around 1150-2000 AD, while the bank that handles money didn't exist until 1425-1475 AD. Also, the original word can trace it's origins back to the swedish word, backe [google.ca], meaning hill.

Although, it wouldn't be long before we start seeing 'MoneyRepositoryOfNigeria.com'1)Sign up for an online account2)Enter your current bank's name, web address, your id number and password3) Click submit to "transfer" your money from your old account to your new money repository account.It's that simple!

Hopefully there are no blood banks or anyone with the last name of "Banks" that might want a.SE domain

The ban on the characters "B A N K S" in that order is obviously a thinly-veiled attack on Wolfram Alpha, particularly on Stephen Wolfram.

As well all know, Stephen Wolfram is the man behind Wolfram Alpha, and also the man behind the "New Kind of Science" -- NKS.

Also, as we all know, the ancient Egyptian word for soul is "Ba".

Therefore, we can conclude that the controllers of the.SE domain have a vendetta against Stephen Wolfram, the soul behind NKS... the Ba-NKS.

So who cares about the edge cases of blood banks or food banks or river banks or the purveyors of fine piggy banks. The real concern here is that there is a government conspiracy against a potential rival of Google... how deeply does Google have its claws sunk into European governments? When can be expect them to ban "Bing" from the url of any site that is not owned by either a registered wholesaler of a certain kind of cherry or a seller of outdated Christmas music?

There are over 2000 domains with "bank" as part of their name in the.se-domain - most of them are not banks in the traditional we-take-care-of-your-money banks. One example is platsbanken.se which is the national goverment register of open jobb.

And strangely enough some of the real big banks don't use bank in their domain name.

I know from several involded in the NIC.SE they dont like this at all and intend to fight it. Actually this is something that has been pushed by the banks for several years but became more prominent because of well-published fishing-scams against the banks - which actually managed to steal some money. The 'fun' part is that the fishing attempts didn't use.se domain names but domain names in other TLDs.

Tracing who created an.SE domain is easier then for other TLD so we probably will never see anyone trying to use the.SE TLD for fishing scams against the banks. So PTS - the national post and telphone goverment overseer - are pushing an agenda that won't really had help against the fishing attempts.

So this is nothing that are decided - yet. It will be a battle between PTS and NIC.SE over who decide over domain names.

The press release [www.pts.se] (Swedish) from PTS (the regulating body referred to) makes it clear that the word is banned unless for banks or if it is otherwise clear that the name in question can not lead to misunderstandings.

A little more information than what you can get from the summary, TFA or the contentless blog rant TFA links to.

the word is banned unless for banks or if it is otherwise clear that the name in question can not lead to misunderstandings.

In which of these perfectly reasonable proposed domain names is it clear that no misunderstandings are possible?

westbank.se (a domain that might concern a region of a city that is divided by a river running north-south)bankright.se (a domain for pilots, named after something they do on a regular basis)bankonit.se (a domain concerning events that are considered likely to happen)cloudban

The press release (Swedish) from PTS (the regulating body referred to) makes it clear that the word is banned unless for banks or if it is otherwise clear that the name in question can not lead to misunderstandings.

A little more information than what you can get from the summary, TFA or the contentless blog rant TFA links to.

Spoilsport! everyone was having such fun, and you had to go and drag facts into it.

So what if I have a domain name promoting bankruptcy related legal services, or a travel website for Fairbanks Alaska, or snowbanking, etc. There's probably a huge list of things I haven't already thought of, but... it seems to not really address the problem with financial service website forgery. I doubt some identity thief will go "Well snap!, lets wrap it up boys, Sweden finally put an end to our tomfoolery!, the game is up!"

Why is everyone assuming that they use the translation of the word bank in the same context as we do in English (such as in reference to a blood or sperm repository)? The Sweedish language isn't romantic based and doesn't share the same base or grammar. As a result, even with the influence of English on their society, I'm not any where near confident as a non-Swedish speaker that the language would even use the translation of "Bank" in the same manner we do in English. Native speakers could likely comment

English is not a romance language either. Both English and Swedish are Germanic languages, and Swedish does use 'bank' in the manner suggested (blodbank = blood bank, pantbank = pawn shop, platsbank = jobs available etc). It's not a bad point that different languages don't necessarily correspond in usage though.

They haven't banned the word bank. They've merely asked the registrar to highlight requests containing the word "bank" so that they can be checked for adherence to an existing law regarding portraying a company as a banking institution if it is not. Not how we would manage the system in the U.S. -- where consumer protection laws are more reactive than proactive compared to many European countries (not a judgment, just a fact) -- but hardly anything to get up in arms about.

BTW, it's already fairly difficult to obtain a.se domain. Generally, they won't let anyone have one who doesn't have a Personnummer (personal number, Swedish equivalent to US SSN) or who can't prove they have a business or other legitimate concern in Sweden.

BTW, it's already fairly difficult to obtain a.se domain. Generally, they won't let anyone have one who doesn't have a Personnummer (personal number, Swedish equivalent to US SSN) or who can't prove they have a business or other legitimate concern in Sweden.

Makes sense. Since I'm in.se, it's easy for me, and I wouldn't assume I could just go out and buy a.no,.uk, or.us domain -- that's what org/com are for.
I thought tiny islands in the Pacific with funny names were the only ones which worked differen

They haven't banned the word bank. They've merely asked the registrar to highlight requests containing the word "bank" so that they can be checked for adherence to an existing law regarding portraying a company as a banking institution if it is not.

Confirmed, in the original, untranslated PDF.
They even point out (like a score of/.ers did) that the word "bank" has several meanings.

Aside from this even being fair or not, I wonder how effective this will be anyways? Off the top of my head, the only bank I can think of that has it in their URL is:

www.bankofamerica.com

However, there's also:www.wachovia.comwww.wellsfargo.comwww.citifinancial.comwww.firstfederal.comwww.htfcu.org

and so on and so on. I'm sure that's just the tiniest subset of banks, and my reference point is from the US, but at least here, it doesn't seem all the common for banks to put the word "bank" in their URL anyways

When setting up a company in the UK your name is also restricted [companieshouse.gov.uk], though notably they do not include "bank" as sensitive, I assume in recognition of the variety of uses. The principle is a good one - people often assume an element of legitimacy to a limited company and assume they are somehow "approved". A limited company effectively makes a bargain with society: its investors enjoy limited liability but in return must conform to certain rules and make certain information public. Does any such bargain exist for domains?

Unless this denial is automatic and without recourse, having no allowance for human review or appeal, then the only problem I see here is yet another Slashdot article exaggerating the facts for the sake of copy.